A templating engine comes really handy when programming in PHP. Here's the smallest one you can use -
function tmpl($tmpl_name, $data) {
$tmpl_dir = 'tmpl/';
ob_start();
include ("$tmpl_dir$tmpl_name.php");
return ob_get_clean();
}
That's it. No other libraries or frameworks required. I think the simplicity and ease of PHP make it the best web language out there.